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Dante Banished Wrote the Divine Comedy

Dan Graves, MSL

For Dante, political failure was costly. A "White" in the
internal struggles of Florence, he became one of the city's six priors.
Disturbances broke out with the "Blacks." The even-handed
priors expelled the worst Blacks and Whites. The Pope, dependent on
Black money, excommunicated the city unless it should restore the
troublesome Blacks.

In November 1300, Dante, with others, traveled to Rome to plead with
the Pope to lift the interdict. The Pope relented. He was, however,
playing a double game. While negotiating with Florence he secretly
invited Charles of Valois to bring an army to Italy. He sent Charles to
Florence to make "peace." The Florentines, long friendly to
the House of France, were reluctant to deny Charles entrance to their
city, although they suspected him of duplicity.

Charles indeed proved to be a serpent. He betrayed the legitimate
government, strengthened the Blacks and allowed them to enter the city.
They immediately went on a five day rampage, looting, killing, and
burning. They deposed the Whites and with them Dante. On this day, March 10, 1302 the victorious Blacks
exiled him on pain of being burnt alive if he ever returned.

The banishment was deeply distressing to Dante. Emotionally it took
him years to accept what had happened. He never saw his wife again,
although some of his children visited him shortly before his death. In
exile, Dante solaced himself with writing. One book defended the use of
the Italian language over Latin. He produced a series of poems called
Convivo (Banquet). In a treatise he argued for separation of
church and state. Through letters he sought to influence Florentine
politics. The collapse of his political hopes led him to stake his
chance of restoration on one last, great work.

It is not known just when he began the Divine Comedy. A
giant epic of love and faith, Dante envisioned it in three parts, Hell,
Purgatory, and Paradise. It yearns with utopian nostalgia for a
Pan-Christian empire and radiates a Boethian sense of divine reality.
"...in His own eternity, outside of time, outside of every other
limit, as it pleased Him, the Eternal Love disclosed Himself in new
loves."

Banishment drew out Dante's genius. The Divine Comedy's
vigorous style fixed the Italian language in its modern form well before
the same was true of any other European tongue. He had been a poet,
lover, father, ruler, soldier, and diplomat. Inevitably his work
reflects this breadth of interests. Nonetheless, its merit escaped most
contemporaries and did not win him a return to Florence. In fact, the
church would place the Divine Comedy on the Index of
Prohibited Books, probably because Dante had consigned seven wicked
popes to hell.